Market Watch Com Inc

A sampling of Thursday's analyst equity rating changes and new coverage: * Applebee's International Inc. (ticker: APPB; Thursday close and change: $25.81, up $1.94) was raised to "strong buy" from "neutral" by Allan F. Hickok at Piper Jaffray Inc., with a 12-month target of $30. * Bestfoods (BFO; $49.31, up $1.94) was raised to "strong buy" from "market perform" by John M. O'Neil at BT Alex. Brown Inc. * In new coverage, Market-Watch.com Inc. (MKTW; $72, up $6.

A sampling of Thursday's analyst equity rating changes and new coverage: * Applebee's International Inc. (ticker: APPB; Thursday close and change: $25.81, up $1.94) was raised to "strong buy" from "neutral" by Allan F. Hickok at Piper Jaffray Inc., with a 12-month target of $30. * Bestfoods (BFO; $49.31, up $1.94) was raised to "strong buy" from "market perform" by John M. O'Neil at BT Alex. Brown Inc. * In new coverage, Market-Watch.com Inc. (MKTW; $72, up $6.

Wit Capital Corp., the brokerage that pioneered the sale of stock over the Internet, said Thursday it hired Merrill Lynch & Co. analyst Jonathan Cohen as its research director. Cohen followed Internet companies for the largest U.S. securities firm. He was named to Institutional Investor's All-America Research Team the last three years, Wit Capital said. Wit Capital has helped underwrite more than 50 stock sales, including MarketWatch.com Inc., EarthWeb Inc., Tweeter Home Entertainment Group Inc.

* Loudeye Technologies Inc. said it had struck a pact to provide America Online, the Internet unit of AOL Time Warner Inc., with music services. Shares of Loudeye jumped 26 cents, or 24%, to $1.34 in heavy trading on Nasdaq, but are still off about 90% from year-earlier levels. AOL Time Warner closed up 10 cents at $51.10 on the Big Board. * * Online financial news provider MarketWatch.com Inc. said it would cut more than 15% of its work force as part of an effort to cut costs.

After several days of profit-taking in the Internet stock sector, today's trading debut of MarketWatch.com Inc. promises to be closely watched. The San Francisco company, which operates a popular financial news Web site, raised $46.8 million in an initial stock sale Thursday that tapped investor interest in financial news and in the Net. The company sold 2.75 million shares, a 23% stake, at $17 each.

Viacom Inc.'s CBS Television Network brought its Internet sites back under the control of the broadcast operations, a CBS spokesman said, becoming the latest media company to restructure its online businesses. The restructuring of CBS.com and CBSnews.com, which will put management control back into the hands of CBS TV instead of Viacom Internet Ventures, will result in limited job changes, the spokesman said.

Thom Calandra, the chief commentator for CBS MarketWatch and a founder of its parent company MarketWatch.com Inc., resigned Thursday amid probes into his stock trading. Calandra, 47, stepped down after becoming the target of a Securities and Exchange Commission informal inquiry over trading dating back to October 2002, MarketWatch said.

Stock in MarketWatch.com Inc., which runs an online financial news site aligned with CBS, soared in its debut Friday as Internet-hungry investors jumped at the first new stock offering of 1999. Shares in the operator of the CBS.MarketWatch site rocketed to close at $97.50 on Nasdaq, up $80.50 from their offering price of $17. The stock hit a high of $130. The run-up bestowed the money-losing firm with a $1.1-billion market value.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has subpoenaed the personal stock-trading records of four executives at MarketWatch.com Inc. as part of the probe into former commentator Thom Calandra, who resigned in January, the company said Wednesday. The subpoenas were sent Tuesday to MarketWatch Chief Executive Larry Kramer, Editor in Chief David Callaway, Chief Technology Officer Jamie Thingelstad and Executive Vice President Bill Bishop.

British media giant Pearson agreed to buy a 34.4% stake in MarketWatch.com Inc. from Data Broadcasting Corp. for $26.9 million. Pearson, whose holdings include the Financial Times newspaper and Penguin books, owns 60% of Data Broadcasting, a provider of financial market data. San Francisco-based MarketWatch.com operates the CBS MarketWatch financial-news Web site. Data Broadcasting said it will be profitable before taxes now that it no longer has to shoulder a share of MarketWatch.com's losses.

MarketWatch.com Inc., which operates a financial information site on the World Wide Web--http://cbs.marketwatch.com--filed for an initial stock offering that could raise as much as $34.5 million. The San Francisco-based company was formed in 1997 by CBS Broadcasting Inc. and Data Broadcasting Corp. The Web site is aimed largely at individual investors, offering information such as stock quotes, market news, chat rooms and columns. With the Securities and Exchange Commission filing, MarketWatch.